“El Capitan” was born in a nameless village south of Madrid on a frost bitten night in December in the year that followed the end of the Great War. The eighth and penultimate son of fifteen children brought into the world by Clara and Fernando Muñoz, Francisco was destined to survive the bitterness and poverty of childhood where six of his siblings would not be counted so lucky. Fernando, an illiterate agricultural worker with one foot, hobbled from dawn until dusk, three hundred and sixty five days of the year in red fields of grape vines and grass. He put enough food on the table to feed two thirds of his family and spent most of the night praying to the saints to deliver the other third. Clara, when not heavily pregnant, cooked and cleaned, tended to her offspring and her aging mother and scrubbed the dirty private linen of the land owner who employed her husband. When times were really tough and harvests failed, she washed her tangled blond hair with beer, put on her Sunday best, kissed her hang dog husband on the forehead and strode out into the night, returning the next morning flush faced and exhausted yet always brandishing a basket of flour, fresh meat and eggs. 

Francisco watched his parents work and breed themselves into an early grave, repulsed by his father’s shame and embittered by his mother’s ingenuity. He watched in powerless exasperation as his older brothers and sisters dumbly followed suit. He realised early on that if he was going to live a long and fruitful life he would have to get a ticket out of the hell hole his family were also digging for him. Forced out into the fields by the time he was five years old, he cottoned on quick that the best way to get out of making the same mistakes as his downtrodden family, was to distance himself from them as quickly as possible and make friends with the men who were allowed to manipulate the machinery. Crossing the sun kissed fertile soil in grubby flip flopped feet, he boldly marched up to the foreman and offered to crawl into the tiny spaces between the cogs and wheels of a broken down press in return for lessons on engineering and wine making. The man, amused by such a serious and determined expression on the face of one so young, agreed to his proposition immediately. By the time Francisco had grown too big to be of any further use to the machinists, he’d turned a disadvantage of birth into an opportunity to obtain a free education. He’d made sure not to squander one moment, learning how to read and write, if only viticulture and mechanical terminology and in the process caught the eye of a sacred enchufe, in the guise of the land owner himself, Don Armando Blas Candela.

Impressed by the boy’s inventiveness, (a talent he informed the young Francisco that he must have inherited from his mother), and his youthful naiveté (he was still only paying him labourers wages), Don Armando took him under his wing with the intention of grooming him into a half price factory foreman. Keen that he remained completely unaware of his true value, he invited Francisco to live in the servant’s quarters at his house, away from the more common and disgruntled proletariat. After years of subjecting himself to the rigours of agricultural management and bowing to innumerable humiliating chores and requests of the Blas Candela family , Don Armando finally rewarded Francisco at the age of fifteen with the confidence of his most treasured secret. A quiet, competitive and  well nourished man, needful of a bolt hole away from his wife, mistress and two demanding daughters, Don Armando kept the under build of his seven bedroom villa under lock and key. Every evening, after supper, he would descend the cold staircase into the bowels of his home, unlock the bronze padlock and enter his own world of make believe, where Don Quixote still fought windmills and knights still rescued damsels from the distress of castle walls and ugly husbands. A gleaming dungeon of silver swords and rapiers, knives and blades of all descriptions hung from the walls and in cabinets that stretched the length of the dimly lit room. Placing a brown leather protector over his rotund physique, Don Armando would dash up a sword, and dance his portly frame up and down a well worn Persian carpet, lunging at thieves and moors and gypsies intent on destroying the virtue of his two rich daughters.

On this particular night, filled with the melancholy of whisky and red wine, Don Armando staggered to Francisco’s quarters and bid him get out of bed and assist him with the task of opening the padlock to the door. Once the great dungeon door had creaked open, Francisco was invited to watch through bleary yet enchanted eyes, as the fat old man he had come to know as a tyrant and slave master transformed himself into an agile baby deer right before his eyes, the glint of metal caught by candlelight skipping on a memory captured in another time and place.

“This is my treasure, dear Paco,” Don Armando sang with a smile, jumping around like a Billy goat, “each one of these swords is worth at least five hundred thousand pesetas my poor friend. This is how I hide my black money so that the tax man cannot get to it and so that my wife and scrounging daughters cannot get their hands on it either.”

Francisco surveyed the many cupboards that lined the length of the dark cavern, quickly estimating the full value of the landowner’s collection. His head swam with the magnitude of the wealth that lay before him, causing him to reach out to the nearest table laden with blades to steady himself.

“These knives and swords are all fashioned from the finest Toledo steel, the strongest steel in the world, my dear boy,” Don Armando continued red cheeked, “each one a perfectly constructed and individually designed masterpiece of creation. Each time I count enough cash from the tin beneath these flagstones, I call upon my old friend near the capital and he sources me another work of art for my collection.”

Francisco staggered as his knees tried to give way, the understanding of the torture that lay before him too much for such a young mind to comprehend. One of the sharp blades, the one with the leather handle shaped like a bear fell to the floor by his feet, ringing out an alarm call that bounced off the cramped curving walls, but that did not reach the ears of the lancing landowner.

“What would they think if they knew about this little find, heh Paco? What would that corpulent grotesque woman and my two spoilt offspring do if they knew that the key to riches they so annoyingly covet and moan after actually lay beneath their feet in a form that their ignorant female minds could never appreciate?”

Francisco, still dumbstruck, stared at the knife between his feet and imagined in horror how it would feel to plunge it deep into the back of the prancing and prattling proprietor before him.

“Thank god your mother has always been such a good fuck, my son,” Don Armando said, turning and winking at Francisco before turning his back on him once again to continue his practice. “Without her on this farm to charm away the cheerless life I lead, I do not know what I would have done by now,” he laughed, taking a swig of whiskey from a silver flask that sloshed at his stretching waistband. “At least she gave me a few sons, dear God, to honour my masculinity instead of two whinging and ungrateful females who wouldn’t know how to make a man happy if their lives depended on it.”

Francisco’s eyes glazed over. His pupils relaxed. His legs bent at the knee and his hand touched the blade at his feet, magnetically drawn by the power of his overwhelming shame and disgust.

“I mean, how difficult can it be for Gods sake to show their father some love and appreciation? I shouldn’t have to steal it, surely. They should give to me willingly. I am a man after all and if their mother cannot satisfy me, and your mother is up the duff with another one of my bastard children how else I am I supposed to survive? Please tell me dear boy?”

Francisco pulled himself up, knife in hand, swelled by rage to the height and breadth of the bear that he held encased within his bloodless fingers. His heart pounded against the wall of his chest, thudded in his ears, rattled his addled brain. He took a step forward, out of the shadows and cleared his throat. He brought his hand up, pushed the glinting blade out in front of him, stiffened his arm to take the impending impact.

“Don Armando,” he called.

But his master did not turn around, nor did he cease his rant.

“Don Armando,” he shouted.

But the landowner still shuffled on, taking another swig from his flask.

“Don Armando,” Francisco cried out, endeavouring to remain steady, blinking salty tears from his eyes.

But Don Armando could not hear him, or did not wish to be brought back from the depth of his personal anguish.

“Don Armando?” Francisco wavered, the knife becoming heavier by the second, weighing on his arm and his consciousness.

Then all of a sudden, through a cloud of scent and billowing white petticoats, the Toledo steel knife with the leather strap shaped like a bear was wrenched from his young trembling hand and plunged deep into the centre of Don Armando’s back, severing his spinal chord on impact and puncturing the back of his left lung.

“Thank God for that,” Eva exclaimed, dropping the blade on the cold concrete floor as her father’s legs buckled beneath him and a trickle of blood seeped from the side of his surprised mouth. “You took your time, didn’t you?” she said, turning to Francisco incredulously. “I’ve been standing at that door for the last fifteen minutes, waiting for you to get on with it for me because I thought you might actually have some balls about you, but it would appear you’re just as useless and gutless as the rest of the men around here.”

She stepped carefully over the pool of blood that was expanding away from her father’s back, peering down to look into his face, before placing her slippered foot on his side and rocking him back and forth. “He’ll be dead in a few minutes,” she said as a matter of fact, standing back up and brushing her dark brown curling hair away from her pale face. “I’ll have to blame all of this on you, you understand? Patricide is an awful crime at the best of times, but your predicament will be understood far more readily than mine and I have to consider the financial future of my sister and my sick mother as well.”

Whether due to the thrill of the kill or the extreme calculating force that this woman exuded, Francisco realised much to his dismay that he had become very excited.

“You can take as many of these bloody swords as you can carry, you should be able to get enough money to live comfortably for a while far away from here.” Eva continued, pacing up and down in front of the expiring body of her father. “You can take one of his horses, the black one with the white nose,” she said pausing to look into the false assailants face, “and you must promise on your honour as my half brother, never to come back here and dishonour my family again.”

The young boy nodded his head as she walked forward to stand before him, brushing his hands away from his shame to place her warm hand in their place. Squeezing him ever so gently, she placed her rosy lips on his and kissed him with an affection that he had never and was never ever to feel again in his lifetime. Over far too soon, she then released her physical hold, softly licked her lips and pointed to the open doorway, “You must go now,” she said with finality.